'Testing a World View', Antony Gormley, 1993 | Tate Testing a World View Object, each: 1120 x 485 x 1070 mm Collection Presented by the artist (Building the Tate Collection) 2005 Reference T12034 Summary Testing a World View is a sculptural installation consisting of five identical iron figures bent at right angles at the waist. The figures are based on a cast made from the artist’s body and are installed in varying positions related to the architecture of the space where they are on display. The figure’s ninety degree angle corresponds to sitting bolt upright with the legs stretched out in front, or bending over with legs and back very straight. It may also be read as corresponding to the absolute laws of geometry. Gormley explored the potential of this ‘absolute’ posture by positioning the sculptures in different orientations, for example lying in the middle of the room or against the walls, ceiling and floor.

According to the artist, the different positions evoke states ranging from ‘hysteria, head-banging, catatonia, to the awakened dead and the about-to-be-beheaded’ (note from the artist to Tate curator Evi Baniotopoulou, March 2005). The work was exhibited at Gormley’s Turner Prize display in Tate Britain in 1994, when he won the prize. Referring to Testing a World View, the artist has commented that: The work is a kind of psychological Cubism. An identical body cast made from the interior of a body case five times, which I then try to test against architecture. The piece expresses the polymorphousness of the self; that in different places we become different and I think this is physical. If Cubism is about taking one object and making multiple views of it in one place, this is a dispersion of one object into several cases for itself. (Quoted in Antony Gormley, p.48.) Gormley began using casts of his body as the basis of his sculptures in 1981 and continued to base his work on his own body during the 80s and much of the 90s.

For such works as Three Ways: Mould, Hole and Passage 1981 (Tate T07015 ) and Untitled (for Francis) 1985 (Tate T05004 ) he held a pose while being wrapped in scrim and plaster. When the cast was removed and reassembled, Gormley built onto the hollow figure, enlarging it by adding layers of fibreglass. Finally strips of roofing lead were beaten onto the figure encasing it in a skin. These were joined with soldering lines that follow horizontal and vertical axes, constituting a type of grid. By contrast, the figures constituting Testing a World View were cast from iron. A mould was made from the inside of the initial cast of the artist’s body, and this was used to cast the five figures. The lines on the bodies resulting from the casting process do not follow the straight rigour of the grid but rather the contours of the body’s limbs, conferring a more organic appearance. Unlike the smooth, glossy lead in the earlier works, the iron has a rough, unfinished surface which has corroded in places resulting in rusting and other colouring.

Although the body is not significantly enlarged, it is generalised by the omission of all facial features and such details as fingers and toes. Testing a World View represents an attempt by the artist to challenge the single reading of a particular body posture, relating the body to architecture and other geometric formations. For the artist, the rigid pose suggests a body in crisis; installed in varying relationships to architectural space, the five bodies ‘demonstrate the current crisis of confidence in the Western world view, “the crisis of the conceptual frame that we have put around space”’(Virginia Button, Turner Prize 1994, [p.8]).

Further reading: Antony Gormley, exhibition catalogue, Malmö Konsthalle, Tate Gallery Liverpool, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin 1993, p.48, reproduced pp.104-7 in colour Turner Prize 1994, exhibition brochure, Tate Gallery, London 1994, [pp.8-9], [p.8], reproduced [p.9] in colour Antony Gormley: Making Space, exhibition catalogue, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead 2004, p.72, reproduced p.72 in colour Elizabeth Manchester 'Testing a World View', Antony Gormley, 1993 | Tate Testing a World View Object, each: 1120 x 485 x 1070 mm Collection Presented by the artist (Building the Tate Collection) 2005 Reference T12034 Summary Testing a World View is a sculptural installation consisting of five identical iron figures bent at right angles at the waist. The figures are based on a cast made from the artist’s body and are installed in varying positions related to the architecture of the space where they are on display.

The figure’s ninety degree angle corresponds to sitting bolt upright with the legs stretched out in front, or bending over with legs and back very straight. It may also be read as corresponding to the absolute laws of geometry. Gormley explored the potential of this ‘absolute’ posture by positioning the sculptures in different orientations, for example lying in the middle of the room or against the walls, ceiling and floor. According to the artist, the different positions evoke states ranging from ‘hysteria, head-banging, catatonia, to the awakened dead and the about-to-be-beheaded’ (note from the artist to Tate curator Evi Baniotopoulou, March 2005). The work was exhibited at Gormley’s Turner Prize display in Tate Britain in 1994, when he won the prize. Referring to Testing a World View, the artist has commented that: The work is a kind of psychological Cubism. An identical body cast made from the interior of a body case five times, which I then try to test against architecture. The piece expresses the polymorphousness of the self; that in different places we become different and I think this is physical.

If Cubism is about taking one object and making multiple views of it in one place, this is a dispersion of one object into several cases for itself. (Quoted in Antony Gormley, p.48.) Gormley began using casts of his body as the basis of his sculptures in 1981 and continued to base his work on his own body during the 80s and much of the 90s. For such works as Three Ways: Mould, Hole and Passage 1981 (Tate T07015 ) and Untitled (for Francis) 1985 (Tate T05004 ) he held a pose while being wrapped in scrim and plaster. When the cast was removed and reassembled, Gormley built onto the hollow figure, enlarging it by adding layers of fibreglass. Finally strips of roofing lead were beaten onto the figure encasing it in a skin. These were joined with soldering lines that follow horizontal and vertical axes, constituting a type of grid. By contrast, the figures constituting Testing a World View were cast from iron.

A mould was made from the inside of the initial cast of the artist’s body, and this was used to cast the five figures. The lines on the bodies resulting from the casting process do not follow the straight rigour of the grid but rather the contours of the body’s limbs, conferring a more organic appearance. Unlike the smooth, glossy lead in the earlier works, the iron has a rough, unfinished surface which has corroded in places resulting in rusting and other colouring. Although the body is not significantly enlarged, it is generalised by the omission of all facial features and such details as fingers and toes. Testing a World View represents an attempt by the artist to challenge the single reading of a particular body posture, relating the body to architecture and other geometric formations. For the artist, the rigid pose suggests a body in crisis; installed in varying relationships to architectural space, the five bodies ‘demonstrate the current crisis of confidence in the Western world view, “the crisis of the conceptual frame that we have put around space”’(Virginia Button, Turner Prize 1994, [p.8]).

Further reading: Antony Gormley, exhibition catalogue, Malmö Konsthalle, Tate Gallery Liverpool, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin 1993, p.48, reproduced pp.104-7 in colour Turner Prize 1994, exhibition brochure, Tate Gallery, London 1994, [pp.8-9], [p.8], reproduced [p.9] in colour Antony Gormley: Making Space, exhibition catalogue, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead 2004, p.72, reproduced p.72 in colour Elizabeth Manchester Antony Gormley: Firmament, Mason's Yard, 2008 | White Cube Antony Gormley 6 March – 12 April 2008 Mason's Yard Following on from the success of his exhibition at The Hayward Gallery, London in 2007, Gormley created two substantial sculptural installations that test and respond to the architectural limits of the gallery spaces at White Cube Mason’s Yard.

In the lower-ground gallery, Gormley installed a single ‘expanded field’ constructed from 1770 steel elements and 1019 steel balls, welded together to create a non-regular, polygonal structure whose form dissolved and resolved throughout the gallery. Pressed against the edges of the gallery space, the installation, entitled Firmament, brought to mind an assembled matrix of volumes that map a celestial constellation while also implying the form of a body that is lost within it. With its graphic outline, Firmament looms over the viewer, and at times feels claustrophobic, while at others it comes across as a landscape-like drawing in space. Gormley’s work has always been about our sense of perception, testing what it feels like to experience our physical presence in certain conditions of time and space. In this installation, the viewer is asked to readjust, continually, their relationship to the field as they navigate through it. The work was developed with Tristan Simmonds of the Advanced Geometry Unit at Arup, and it builds upon the collaboration that began with Space Station, which was shown at The Hayward Gallery.

On the ground-floor gallery, Gormley activated the space with 32 solid-iron body forms that chronicle six moments of physical endurance. The works were placed throughout the space on floors, walls and ceiling. Lost Horizon is an internalised form of Event Horizon, his celebrated installation over the rooftops of central London, but here the installation formed a concentrated, haptic field that acts directly on the body of the viewer. Like Critical Mass, which Gormley has reconfigured and assembled in many different architectural environments, Lost Horizon is a temporary infection of a given site, with the potential to activate other spaces in the future. Antony Gormley was born in 1950 in London, England, where he lives and works. He has participated in major group exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale (1982 and 1986), Documenta VIII, Kassel, Germany (1987) and the Sydney Biennale (2006).

Solo exhibitions include The Hayward, London (2007), ICA, Singapore (2005), Fundacao Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon (2004), Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, England (2003), and the National History Museum, Beijing, China (2003). He was awarded the Turner Prize in 1994. Antony Gormley 'nude' statues approved for London | RUDI - Resource for Urban Development International Jobs Antony Gormley 'nude' statues approved for London Westminster City Council has approved plans for a series of nine life-sized statues created by world-famous artist Antony Gormley. Eight of the sculptures will be on the roofs of buildings in the City, and one will be on the pavement at Waterloo Bridge. The installation is one of the largest-ever urban public art commissions. They form part of a show of Gormley's work entitled 'Event Horizon' opening at the Hayward Gallery on the capital's South Bank in May. They are all intended to be in the eye-line of people who visit the exhibition.

Gormley, designer of The Angel of the North, won the Turner Prize in 1994 and was awarded the OBE in 1998 for services to sculpture. The sculptures are modelled on Gormley's own body and are 189cm tall. They are all made of fibreglass apart from the one at Waterloo which is cast iron. Planning Committee Chairman Cllr Robert Davis said: ‘Antony Gomley's statues will make a fascinating although somewhat unusual addition to Westminster's skyline.’ The fibreglass statues are finished with a grey/brown polish and weigh about 20kg each while the cast iron figure is far heavier weighing almost 800kg. Structural engineers have ensured that there is no risk of the installations becoming dislodged or falling and they will be fixed securely to their locations. It will be mounted next month to coincide with the first major London exhibition of Gormley's work, to be held at the Hayward Gallery from 17 May to 19 August. The figures, based on the sculptor's own body, will be placed in various locations near Waterloo Bridge, including the London Television Centre, the National Theatre and the Shell Centre.

All will face the Hayward Centre. The final sculpture is planned for the United Grand Lodge of England and will be considered by Camden council next week. Letters supporting Gormley, designer of the Angel Of The North, were received from architect Richard Rogers, the National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, V&A, Royal Academy and the Tate. Gormley, who lives in the capital, said: 'I think it's a tribute to everybody that I've been allowed to get away with it. I feel so grateful to all the people who said, 'Why not?' That attitude - 'Let's do it' - seems to be possible in Britain at the moment. 'If you're able to put a naked body on top of a building perhaps you can do other stuff that isn't necessary.' Recently, Gormley's 100 cast-iron figures of naked men were allowed to remain on Crosby Beach, Merseyside. His one regret is that the management of the Houses of Parliament refused to allow any works on the roof. The Council's planning committee received no formal objections and the application received strong support from a variety of leading museums including the National Portrait Gallery, Victoria and Albert Museum and the Institute of Contemporary Arts.

The sculptures are only temporary and are due to be removed by 31 August 2007. The application was approved at a Council planning meeting. Related stories Information File 3 - workflow Information File 3 This painting selected by the Society for Womens Artists (SWA) has been removed from a London exhibition because it was deemed to be “too pornographic and disgusting”, the artist has said. Leena McCall’s oil painting of her friend, entitled Portrait of Ms Ruby May, Standing, features the model smoking a pipe and wearing a fur-trimmed vest and short trousers, unbuttoned to reveal her cleavage and a strip of black pubic hair. The artist said the piece was designed to “get people talking about [Ms May’s] sexuality” – but it seems she has been too successful in that regard for the liking of the management at The Mall Gallery in central London. Two days after a charity evening and private viewing at the gallery, Ms McCall said she received a phone call from the SWA saying her picture had been removed. She said: “My work deals with female sexual and erotic identity.

The fact that the gallery has deemed the work inappropriate and seen it necessary to have it removed from public display underlines the precise issue I am trying to address: how women choose to express their sexual identity beyond the male gaze.”The gallery offered her the opportunity to replace her painting with another work, but she said that would be tantamount to admitted there was something wrong with it. Instead, she has set up a social media campaign under the banner #eroticcensorship – to see if she can get people talking about sexuality in that medium instead. Twitter users lamented the “19th century Victorian ideas” at play, and asked: “How is that any more outré than classical nudes?” Ruby May, the subject of the painting, said: “I don’t think people realise how threatening a sexually empowered woman is to a paradigm that is still patriarchal at its roots. Thankfully, the world is evolving, this outdated paradigm is crumbling, and forms of censorship such as this are becoming unacceptable to the wider public.” In a statement, the Mall Gallery said: “As an educational arts charity, the federation has a responsibility to its trustees and to the children and vulnerable adults who use its galleries and learning centre.

After a number of complaints regarding the depiction of the subject and taking account of its location en route for children to our learning centre, we requested the painting was removed.” The SWA told the Guardian: “The executive secretary, Rebecca Cotton, said: “We thought the painting was beautifully executed and the composition was much admired. We saw nothing wrong with it; had we, the piece would not have been selected. We hire the gallery space from the Mall Galleries for the period that the show is on. The gallery took it down without seeking our approval.” View the main page for this artwork Pioneering artists from across Europe, the Americas and Japan will be shown at Tate St Ives for the first time in The Modern Lens. This will be the largest display of photographic works ever to be exhibited at the gallery. Looking at developments in international photography from the 1920s to the 1960s, the exhibition uncovers the sense of curiosity and experimentation as artists harnessed the medium in new ways. Photography was used to explore ideas of abstraction, developed in tandem with the emergence of wider modernist languages across the globe.

It also demonstrated the significance of a local perspective, as artists combined the broad influences of abstraction, constructivism and surrealism with their own contexts. There are images of rural landscapes, organic formations, manmade objects and industrial materials, as well as of urban architecture. Loosely arranged by location, The Modern Lens opens with photography and abstraction in Latin America: architecture, light and constructed forms underpin works by artists such as Geraldo de Barros and Thomaz Farkas in Brazil. In subsequent galleries, paintings and sculptures from British artists in the 1930s, including Paul Nash , Ben Nicholson , Ivon Hitchens , Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore , explore a moment in British modernism shaped by the opposing forces of pure abstraction and surrealism. These works are shown in relation to a photographic sequence made by architect and designer Charlotte Perriand, artist Fernand Léger and architect Pierre Jeanneret, who were collaborating in Paris in the same period; their work is the result of a series of ‘performed’ walks in which they staged encounters with geometric forms in nature.

The embracing of new technologies to relay the formal qualities of light, space and tone were central lessons of the Bauhaus in Germany from its opening in 1919. Including rare photograms, prints and film footage by renowned tutors László Moholy-Nagy and Walter Peterhans along with their students, the exhibition considers how the school influenced migrant modernist photographers such as Iwao Yamawaki from Japan and the Hungarian Judit Kárász. The Modern Lens culminates with the work of Harry Callahan, one of America’s most influential photographers. Invited to teach at Moholy-Nagy’s New Bauhaus (Chicago Institute of Design), Callahan worked equally in black and white as well as in colour, and was key to the development of formal abstraction in post-war American photography. Antony Gormley Antony Gormley is widely acclaimed for his sculptures, installations and public artworks that investigate the relationship of the human body to space. His work has developed the potential opened up by sculpture since the 1960s through a critical engagement with both his own body and those of others in a way that confronts fundamental questions of where human beings stand in relation to nature and the cosmos.

Gormley continually tries to identify the space of art as a place of becoming in which new behaviours, thoughts and feelings can arise. Gormley’s work has been widely exhibited throughout the UK and internationally with exhibitions at Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern (2014); Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia (2012); Deichtorhallen, Hamburg (2012); The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (2011); Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria (2010); Hayward Gallery, London (2007); Malmö Konsthall, Sweden (1993) and Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark (1989). He has also participated in major group shows such as the Venice Biennale (1982 and 1986) and Documenta 8, Kassel, Germany (1987). Permanent public works include the Angel of the North (Gateshead, England), Another Place (Crosby Beach, England), Inside Australia (Lake Ballard, Western Australia) and Exposure (Lelystad, The Netherlands).

Gormley was awarded the Turner Prize in 1994, the South Bank Prize for Visual Art in 1999, the Bernhard Heiliger Award for Sculpture in 2007, the Obayashi Prize in 2012 and the Praemium Imperiale in 2013. In 1997 he was made an Officer of the British Empire (OBE) and was made a knight in the New Year’s Honours list in 2014. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, an Honorary Doctor of the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Trinity and Jesus Colleges, Cambridge. Gormley has been a Royal Academician since 2003 and a British Museum Trustee since 2007. Antony Gormley was born in London in 1950. This spring and summer, three rooms at Barrington Court will be filled with Antony Gormley’s acclaimed work Field for the British Isles, consisting of 40,000 small clay figures.

Barrington Court in Somerset is one of five National Trust properties around the country to be chosen to exhibit a special selection of pieces on loan from the Arts Council Collection, the largest loan collection of modern and contemporary British art in the world, as part of the Trust New Art programme. Barrington Court is normally empty of furniture and the three ground floor rooms will be transformed by the presence of the exhibition of Antony Gormley’s work.This is the first time that Field for the British Isles has been spread through three rooms. Antony Gormley is one of Britain’s foremost sculptors, his most famous work being the Angel of the North in Gateshead. His work frequently uses human figures, including several involving life sized cast iron figures. Barrington Court is no stranger to contemporary art, but Field for the British Isles is by far the most ambitious project to have been brought to the National Trust house. Talking about Field coming to Somerset Antony Gormley said: “Field for the British Isles has been in the Arts Council Collection for years and has been seen in varied venues. I hope that at Barrington the impression that the work could go on forever as it reaches into inaccessible places works, so that it appears to have flooded the space.

It’s good that the Trust commissions and shows new art. All art was contemporary once.” Sonja Power, Barrington Court’s House and Collections Manager said. “The figures won’t just fill the rooms, they flow across them from wall to wall,” said ‘The house is normally empty spaces – now it has been brought to life by thousands and thousands of tiny people. We have had contemporary art at Barrington before but this is an entirely different scale. Even with the rest of the house still empty, it will make people look at Barrington in a very different way – and respond to Gormley’s installation in a new way as well.” In keeping with the artist’s instructions, the installation will be set up by local people from across Somerset, who will be working with a team from the Arts Council Collection. Eight of the volunteers involved have been recruited from SCAT (Somerset College of Art and Technology). The Fine Art degree students all of them have a specific interest in installation and sculptural practice. Other volunteers work for South Somerset District Council’s arts and cultural unit while others volunteer already for the Trust at Barrington Court. “Having local community involvement is integral to this work,” explained Paul Howard, who is managing in the installation for the National Trust.

“The figures were each made by the local community on Merseyside and here it is the people of Somerset who will be placing them in Barrington. Each figure is obviously hand made, very simple and yet they look back at you as you look into the rooms – and make the rooms feel so very different. They invade the rooms with their presence but also occupy the minds of those who see the installation, often creating an unexpected reaction.” Antony Gormley said: “Field was my first collaborative work. The concept was mine, but it could not have been made without the help of many people. The instructions to create the work are very simple. You sit on the floor. You take a ball of clay from a pile. With your clay, you create a “body” in the space between your hands. You allow it to stand up, and make it conscious by giving it eyes with the point of a sharpened pencil.

That repeated action of taking a hand-sized ball of clay, squeezing it between your hands, standing it up and giving it consciousness becomes meditative, the repeated action becoming almost like breathing, or a heartbeat.” The figures were made by a community of families in St Helens, Merseyside, and Gormley won the Turner Prize in 1994 for his 1993 exhibition at Tate Liverpool which included Field. It has taken five days to set up the installation at Barrington Court. Caroline Douglas, Head of the Arts Council Collection, said: “The Arts Council Collection has always been committed to showing works in the widest possible range of public buildings across the UK. We are delighted to be working with Barrington Court to bring Field for the British Isles to a new audience as part of the Trust New Art initiative.” In addition to hosting the exhibition, Barrington Court will be running workshops for school groups and visitors who will make their own figures at the property. Trust New Art is the National Trust’s 3-year programme in partnership with the Arts Council England to promote contemporary and modern art in its historic places.

Field for the British Isles has been loaned by the Arts Council Collection, as part of a new collaboration with the National Trust which will see five sites in the Trust’s care show modern and contemporary works from the Collection in selections that resonate with each site’s history and unique character. Men Dyeing Their Beards Bright Colors Is the Latest Trend in Facial Hair In the latest attempt to bring attention to their facial hair, men are dyeing their beards insanely bright colors. Although men dyeing their beards isn't exactly a brand new trend, the practice is picking up steam, likely due to the rise of beards in general. Men are going all out making their beards bright shades of green, blue, pink, or just turning it into a full on rainbow. The new colorful beards are strongly reminiscent of women who started dyeing their armpit hair a spectrum of neon colors last year . In 2014, men put flowers and Christmas decorations in their beards, so this actually doesn't seem too far off course. Maybe this is all to blame on the hordes of dudes who spent $7,000 on facial hair transplants and are now desperately trying to make the most out of their new, expensive accessory.

from drones to bio-hacking, are we ready for a tech takeover? We investigate the tech trends of 2015, and whether this is the year everything we know to be sci-fi, will become sci-fact. "2015? You mean we're in the future?" says Marty McFly in Back to the Future II. We're firmly living in the fast paced age of technology and while we might not be cruising through the clouds in flying cars or eating hydrated pizzas, technology is developing at the speed of light! It shocked our systems in 2014 as we welcomed the rise of wearable technology, got down and dirty with masturbating robots, watched FKA Twigs look fly in Google Glass and broke the internet with #cometlanding. 2015 kicked off with a glimpse into our future at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and it turns out drones and robots are the next big thing, we're heading to infinity and beyond in driverless cars and practically everything on show can to connect to the Internet. The latest tech trends are intended to benefit mankind in every shape and form, from health and fitness to sex and surveillance.

Taking off at the CES, shiny new drones performed dance routines, delivered parcels, took the perfect selfie and tracked, filmed and followed their users. There was even one called Nixie that shape shifts from bracelet to flying camera when thrown in the air. If all goes well, Amazon Prime Air will have your package flown through the sky by their delivering drones, right to your front door in 30 minutes. Driverless cars were an even hotter hit. Fast, furious and futuristic, the self driving Mercedes-Benz F015 stole the show, Nissan is teaming up with NASA and BMW are getting closer and closer to an autonomous car. Wearable technology is still the future of fashion, with smart watches, belts and bracelets monitoring everything from heart rate to health and happiness. Recently, Channel 4 sent comedian KG to the land of high-tech dreams, San Francisco, to film the 4oD Shorts series, Futurgasm . From $100 dollar cups that analyse your drink, to fit friendly watches that shock your body (literally) if you don't exercise, he was exposed to brand spanking new gadgets and gizmos. "The most exciting technology had to be Oculus Rift," says KG on the virtual reality headset.

"As a part of an exhibition called Birdy I was flying around the skies of San Francisco. It felt like I was "Matrixed" into this virtual world that felt so real. When I got off the machine I felt nauseous but I missed my ability to fly." It's easy to get carried away in a virtual reality, dreaming of drones delivering takeaways or driverless cars chauffeuring us to and fro, but what problems arise from our love affair with high tech? "I love technology; I think we should just remember to use our brains. The best thing about the latest developments is how the impossible has become possible," says KG. It's easy to let your mind wonder away with the possibilities of where technology can take us. Over in the states we are one step closer to combining man and machine. Bio-hacking is the term used to describe those who upgrade the body with D.I.Y body enhancements, such as magnetic implants or home gene sequencing. It's like a reinvention of mankind, a superhero makeover for the modern world. "The weirdest part of the trip had to be the bio-hackers. Before we met I was sure I was going to meet cyborg type people - I watch a lot of movies," KG explains.

"When the guy starting moving metal with his finger and picking up keys I was sold. I met a person who had inserted a magnet but his finger was rejecting the foreign object. He said when it finally comes out there is going to be some blood, but he is going to insert a new one right away - hardcore." Bio-hacking is dramatically changing our limitations as humans - Matrix-style magnetic control is only the beginning. Set in a not too far off future, an episode of Charlie Brooker's TV series Black Mirror explored the idea of extreme bio-hacking, with humans implanting micro-chips in their brain, allowing their eyes to work in the same way as Google Glass. It's the idea of merging together the familiar with the future in an exploration to see how far we can push the boundaries of technology. The concept of human manipulation opens up a whole new sci-fi world to explore, how far can we really take bio-hacking? "We already have bum-borgs, these are girls that are trying to get the Kim Kardashian booty via ways of cosmetic surgery, and it's only a matter of time before they can connect a USB port to one of their butt cheeks so you can charge your phone while you are on the go," says KG.

"I think it will take another 10 years before we try something as crazy as that, but if a well known celebrity does it tomorrow we will have bio-hackers all over UK. Celeb culture is still the future, so if it's mixed with technology the cocktail is complete." 2015 is the year that technology may takeover. It's the year that could spell the end of privacy as we enter a constantly surveyed society, one where drones fly overhead recording every move you make, more Orwell's Big Brother than the Channel 5 variety. The more we're used to technology aiding our everyday lives the less we question the ways in which we're becoming powerless and how it may be used against us. Released later this month is Alex Garland's directorial debut Ex Machina. The sci-fi thriller depicts the story of a computer coder who ends up involved in an experiment with a brand new kind of artificial intelligence - a beautiful human-like robot named Ava. Is it possible that the idea behind Ex Machina is more sci-fact than sci-fi? Google have just spent £242 million to purchase DeepMind, a British A.I. company, who are trying to develop artificial conciseness as we speak. If A.I.

develops conciseness, emotions and the ability to improve itself, perhaps it's humans that will go out of fashion. Who knows, maybe we are on our way to a post-human dystopian future where robots rule the world. It's like KG said - the impossible has become possible. Confessions of a sculptor | Times Higher Education (THE) Times Higher Education (THE) Last Name * Email * A valid e-mail address. All e-mails from the system will be sent to this address. The e-mail address is not made public and will only be used if you wish to receive a new password or wish to receive certain news or notifications by e-mail. Password Higher education updates from the THE editorial team World University Rankings news New offers, products and services from THE/TES Global Choose your profile * Share on linkedin Anthony Gormley's figures can be found in such disparate places as a fjord and a cathedral crypt. Elaine Williams talks to him about the sources of his creativity. Anthony Gormley is sitting in the bright, white studio of Vicken Parsons, his wife, and sorting through a pile of monochrome ink drawings for a book to accompany a forthcoming exhibition.

Some are of isolated, barely-formed heads and figures in infinite space, reflecting the nature of his sculptures. The names of Heidegger, Rilke and Steiner crop up. Gormley draws on philosophy but would never claim to be a philosopher. He defines himself as a maker, communicating through material form. Later, as the morning sun streams through the vast basement windows of his north London home he stretches his long body, from which so many of his sculptures have been cast, into the warmth. We are talking about "Field for the British Isles", an installation of 40,000 hand-sized clay figures, made by families in Lancashire under Gormley's supervision and recently shown at the Hayward Gallery, London. Eyes gouged out of the crude forms, standing side by side like a cropped field, the mass of figures compels an eerie silence from its audience. "I think that what 'Field' does is make you aware of yourself without being self-conscious,'' Gormley says. "The work asks 'Who are you?' 'What are you doing here?' In a sense that is what all of my work is asking and I suppose it's what I ask myself.

The work constantly revolves around this investigation of identity as place, our relationship to time and space.'' In physical terms "Field" departs radically from Gormley's previous lead body cases, called "Testing a World View" with which he won the 1994 Turner Prize. Field's thousands upon thousands of solid earthenware figures are in stark contrast to the solitary, smooth, sealed lead sculptures Gormley cast from his own body and which now inhabit various locations - a Norwegian fjord, the flooded crypt of Winchester Cathedral, the city walls of Derry, the austere rooms of Charleston Old Jail in Texas. A lapsed Catholic, Gormley acknowledges his spiritual roots. In Phaidon's monograph on his work he quotes from the Confessions of St Augustine, particularly on the subject of memory: "A spreading limitless room within me. Who can reach its uttermost depth? Yet it is a faculty of my soul and belongs to my nature. In fact I cannot totally grasp all that I am.

Thus the mind is not large enough to contain itselfI'' The skin of his sculptures sets up a dialogue between the inner space of the body - it is no accident that air is named as one of Gormley's materials along with lead, brass, fibreglass, plaster etc - and the great outside world; both are states of infinity. The overriding theme of Gormley's work is the contemplation of human existence in relation to infinity. The son of well-off parents in suburban London - his father ran a drug company and was the first person to produce penicillin commercially - he colonised the garden shed, making things from the age of six or seven, creating a place apart from the "well-organised domestic operation" that was home but from which he felt excluded. His last five years of schooling were spent at Ampleforth College, the monastic boarding school run by Benedictines in the foothills of the North Yorkshire moors, where his interest in art became more focused. He says: "I used to go to the art room and start something off in my first break and rush there at lunch time to see how it was going on, and you'd get down there if you didn't have games immediately after lunch.

I liked to start with a mess, throwing a whole lot of stuff together - it didn't matter if it was oils or poster paints - I haven't stopped working in that way." Contact with monastic life left a legacy: "It was very good to have a strong metaphysical structure to look at the world throughI I gained that idea of a place apart where you can reflect - I suppose that is what a monastery is. I don't think you can go through that kind of education without it affecting everything that happens afterwards for better or for worse." The nearby moors also had enormous impact on his schoolboy consciousness. The fierce weather and the open skies were "a blessing'', creating that tension "between the extension of the human imagination into the landscape'' which informs his work today. After studying anthropology at Cambridge, Gormley spent three years in India with the Buddhist meditation teacher Goenka. Combine Catholic metaphysics with Buddhist meditative practice and the body becomes the focus of all that we are.

Gormley says: "Being within the body is neither good nor bad, it has neither height nor breadth, it is the locus of a kind of being, it is extremely individual, personal, intimate but also common, collectiveI" In exploring this paradox between being and non-being he is led into the dangerous territory of self-sacrifice - giving himself to entombment during the sculpting process. Although he painted at Cambridge and set up a pottery studio there for making sculpture in clay, it was at Goldsmiths College School of Art that his ideas really began to take shape. Goldsmiths was the perfect follow-on to a Cambridge alive with debate about what should be studied and how, and student demonstration against Vietnam.

Art students were encouraged to question the canon as well as being subject to constant criticism themselves: "Somehow nothing was fixed - even the reputation of the greats like Giacometti could be criticised - you know, why does he sign his name so big at the bottom of his paintings, is he not living out some idea of the existential artist?'' "It was an unwritten law and held by the students themselves,'' said Gormley, "that you should do at least one exhibition a year, and on the Wednesday after installation of the work you would hold a seminar to which you would invite other members and students from other faculties and departments. You would make an introduction and then it was open to the floor. It was a fantastic way of showing how the object of art could be a kind of table across which ideas could travel and be focused or articulated. Goldsmiths was the most stimulating, the most responsible use of my time I've ever experienced. It is a model that cannot be bettered." Graduates of Goldsmiths have made a major impact on the art scene, Damien Hirst among their number.

But what of the view of Ernst Gombrich the art historian, expressed in the published conversation he held with Gormley, that the current "sensationalism and lack of concentration'' in the art world is "not very desirable"? Gormley finds some sympathy with this criticism. "The convention of today is that you challenge the conventionsI it has almost become an orthodoxy and we know that the avant garde is over. You could say I'm a radical who wants art not to lose itself in a debate about its own history or the development of its own languages." In a recent address at Durham Cathedral he expanded on this criticism: "It's all very well deconstructing the social, sexual and economic conditions of the contemporary world with pithy ironyI this was the project of postmodernism, but it now has to be followed by a more serious project of reconstructing a world out of the earth." There is something slightly messianic about Gormley's ambitions. He wants to use the "space'' of art for "communion''.

At Durham he asked whether art could make contact "not only between ourselves but between us and history and in doing that to maybe also derive the energy necessary to believe in our part in the construction of the future. I am asking is it possible for art to provide a space that can be regenerative?" Gormley's faith in Catholicism has been replaced by his faith that "somehow we have to take on the responsibility of being creators in the world". His "Angel of the North" will stand 65 feet high, towering over Gateshead and the A1, a signpost along the motorway. Strengthened by 25cm deep spars set into the body, encasing it like the armour of "Archangel Michael" to hold the outstretched "aeroplane" wings, "this extreme exoskeleton'' will express "on the one hand a kind of strength, but also a kind of openness, a vulnerability''. As people sit in the "bubbles'' of their cars Gormley is hoping his creation will "penetrate the protection of that enclosed space'', behaving like an advertisement hoarding on Route 56 in the United States "but trying to affect a very different part of you''.

Given that 90,000 people will pass the Angel every day, that has to be an ambitious intention. Ever prepared to make a shift, Gormley is now seeking a new directness in his work, creating cast iron body forms where only the clingfilm becomes "the mediating skin between the three-dimensional record of my body and the world''. These sculptures, as Gormley describes, are more naked, more exposed, more immediately communicative. Field's huge success has also led him to take stock. He sees it as the most engaging of his work, whereas the body works have been regarded as "cold, distant, disturbing, unapproachable. Somehow Field has become mythic because people have empowered it. By their response to the work it has become something they have given a place and an importance to". With Giacometti on show at the Royal Academy, Gormley recognises similar obsessive behaviour within himself. Whereas Giacometti made it his life's passion to objectify distance between people, Gormley has latched onto internal space "in which the viewer and me become the same and where there is no distance". But it is not how he wants to be.

"I think I have been completely obsessive, I've been in a kind of mania for 20 years and I would like to escape from it really. I'm looking into analysis at the moment. I don't want to live out a life that is determined by certain kinds of repetitive behaviour. I'm not antagonistic to my unconscious, I see it as a fertile ground out of which everything worth doing comes, but I thought I'd just try something else. Artists on the whole are a bit worried that they might lose their motivation if they discover that the basis of all their work is that they had a strange relationship with their mother." You've reached your article limit Register to continue Registration is free and only takes a moment. Once registered you can read a total of 6 articles each month, plus: Sign up for the editor's highlights Receive World University Rankings news first Get job alerts, shortlist jobs and save job searches Participate in reader discussions and post comments Or subscribe for unlimited access to: Digital editions

Question: Who won the Turner Prize in 1994 with his cast-iron work entitled 'Testing A World View'?
Answer: ANTHONY GORMLEY